Research Highlights

PNNL to Host DOE Forum on Energy Storage Safety and Reliability

Event anticipated to bring together 120 participants from energy storage community

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will host the Energy Storage Systems Safety and Reliability Forum on March 28 — 29, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. The forum is being hosted on behalf of DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, which maintains an extensive program on grid-scale energy storage technology advancement involving the entire spectrum—from materials research through device development, systems development, deployment, and analysis.

The forum will bring together around 120 energy storage experts from utilities, testing and certification laboratories, national laboratories, and academia. Forum participants will learn about the current state of energy storage safety and reliability and will help identify additional R&D efforts that further advance the current DOE roadmap for energy storage.

The Forum will feature a series of panel discussions on grid-scale storage experiences, safety assessments of small and large energy storage systems from design to decommissioning, safety and reliability requirements for microgrids, and the state of industry reliability. There will also be sessions on topics such as R&D advancements in storage safety as well as reliability, current development activities in codes and standards, and testing of energy storage safety.

Keynote speakers will be announced soon.

Since 2013, support from the U.S. Department of Energy and Washington State’s Clean Energy Fund has enabled Washington State to play a leadership role in the emerging grid-scale energy storage sector. This partnership has enabled groundbreaking technologies—such as the UniEnergy Flow Battery, which received a 2017 Green Chemistry Challenge Award—to demonstrate technical and economic viability while also advancing grid modernization concepts. These concepts include transactive energy through projects like the University of Washington-Washington State University-PNNL Clean Energy and Transactive Campus Project and Avista Corporation’s shared microgrid demonstrations. Stakeholder experiences from these and other storage projects across the country will provide a dynamic and informative agenda for the forum.